


Would I Could Afford to Buy My Love a Fine Robe

by Alcoholic_kangaroo



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Dead Will Doll, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Overly attached big brother, Pseudonecrophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-16 18:33:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14816657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alcoholic_kangaroo/pseuds/Alcoholic_kangaroo
Summary: Jonathan sneaks into the morgue to visit his brother's corpse.Apologizing for this ahead of time.





	Would I Could Afford to Buy My Love a Fine Robe

**Author's Note:**

> Despite the tags there is technically no death, underage, or non-con involved here, which you'll understand if you're a fan of the show already.

Would I could afford to buy my love a fine gown  
Made of gold and silk Arabian thread  
But, I am dead and gone and lying in a church ground  
And still I push my barrow all the day  
Still I push my barrow all the day

 

* * *

 

There was an old tradition in Victorian times that involved photographing dead children. Well, the morbid practice included the dead in general, but children were especially popular subjects. Because the death of youth, then as today, is both devastating and enchanting. Nobody wants to lose a child. Even with higher infant mortality rates in the past, and a barrage of unique and deadly childhood diseases, losing a child was never an easy occasion. Parents have always wished to immortalize their offspring, the ones that will never pass on the family genes, in some way.

Jonathan has seen some of the old pictures. They're decidedly creepy, but haunting in their beauty. The children's corpses were not old, nor shriveled and covered in coarse gray hair. The shells they left behind were more reminiscent of the pale, consumptive bodies of those taken by tuberculosis. The sepia quality of the antique photographs may have helped with the promotion of this illusion. Except many of them had soft, round faces, not the angular, underfed appearance of such disease victims.

In death, they are little porcelain dolls, printed on celluloid and stored away in some forgotten box or barely opened closet somewhere like that exercise equipment everyone always swears they'll use. Cherubic memories, forgotten by distant relatives and close strangers alike, wrapped in flimsy white lace and shining silks. White. The color of innocence. Of purity. Children back then were always draped in white.

Will is draped in white. White against white against white. Skin, sheet, gurney. But there is no lace nor silk. Just the scratchy, abrasive cotton of a sheet with too few thread count. The white expanse stops just below his little pointed chin, only a delicately-boned face on display.

The sheet is hiding the moles on Will's throat. Even hidden, Jonathan is imagining their placement beneath the paper-thin barrier. Will had to always be careful about anything covering his throat, lest a high zipper catch one or a a loose thread encircle one. That happened, once, when he was seven. Their mother had wrapped a soft, new, hand-knitted scarf around Will's neck and sent him out to play for hours out in the snow. He had returned with one of his moles bright red, engorged, an unraveled piece of yarn stuck fast to the little beauty mark when he tried to remove the scarf. He had cried out in pain, panicking, and Jonathan had rushed to help him, to see what was wrong. What was happening. To see why tears were quickly forming in Will's eyes. The mole had transformed purple, then maroon, then black, over the next handful of days, and had finally dropped off completely. Their mother said it was like a tourniquet, the string had cut off blood circulation to the small flap of skin, essentially suffocated it.

It grew back, which Jonathan was happy for because he thought all of Will's moles were adorable and fitting, but the initial experience had pained and frightened his little brother. So much so he had never worn that scarf again. He had given it to Mike for Christmas, with their mother's permission. It had only been worn once but, in Jonathan's opinion, the deep red yarn never complimented Mike's skin tone like it had Will's. Will looked good in shades of autumn, Mike looks better in shades of winter.

Jonathan slips a finger beneath the sheet, near Will's collar, and pulls it down just a couple inches to check on that part of his throat. It looks fine. Pale, but nothing inflamed or engorged.

But what about the other moles covering his body? What if this horrible, coarse fabric irritates them? Causes them to fall off from friction alone? They can't just regrow. And if Will is missing any of his moles would that transfer over in the afterlife? Would the Will in Heaven notice a mole missing on his shoulder? On his arm? His hip? His lower back? Did Will even know about that mole right above his ass crack?

Jonathan wants to rip off the offending fabric. To blanket him in a protective layer of silk and satin and fleece, keeping him warm and safe. Wrapping that will protect from anything cold or harsh. Wrapping that can protect Will from prying eyes.

Jonathan was supposed to protect him. That was his job. His most important job, when Will was alive. He's not alive anymore. Not anymore. A week ago he was smiling and laughing and showing off those little laugh crinkles near his eyes. But Jonathan didn't protect him and now he's dead. He was supposed to protect him and he failed and now there's just these white walls and this white floor and this white gurney and these disgusting white sheets and this white-blue, blue-white, skin.

God, in life, Will was never this pale. He looks more like a Wheeler with the blue-white hue to his skin than a Byers. Byers' are tawny. What a stupid word that is. Tawny. Jonathan read that description in one of his mother's trashy romance novels when he was thirteen and took to using it too often afterwards. Kids always made fun of him for his weird vocabulary. Why had he been so fond of that stupid word, tawny sounds like the color of dog's fur.

Kids made fun of Will as well. Because he was so small and sensitive and quiet. Jonathan had been small and sensitive and quiet but never to the same degree as Will. Will had it easier, he had friends who stood up for him. Has friends. They're still alive. They're still breathing. Still crying, probably, and Jonathan feels a strange sense of satisfaction at the idea. He wants people to cry for his little brother. Heaven knows he has. Even though he has no right to cry over something that's his own damn fault. All his fault.

This room is supposed to be off limits. Keyword being “supposed” to. But nobody is in the morgue at ten at night. They all left hours ago and, well, Jonathan knows he shouldn't be here. Not just because of the rules, of course, but because he knows this is unhealthy. What good could possibly come out of sneaking into an abandoned morgue to take clandestine pictures of his little brother's dead body?

None at all. But it was a compulsion. Something he couldn't ignore. Something that made his fingers twitch and his leg shake uncontrollably beneath the kitchen table until his mother had barked at him to stop thumping his foot against the damn linoleum. Not how she would normally react but given the circumstances he couldn't hold a grudge at her short temper. Besides, he killed her baby boy, he deserved far more than a scolding. He had even failed her at the viewing earlier, falling to his own weaknesses when he should have been supporting her. He's been the man of the house since his father left. Hell, years before that, honestly, because his father is a shitty excuse for a man. It's supposed to be his responsibility to be strong and competent.

Pathetically, Jonathan had been incapable of even looking at his brother's corpse from a good twenty feet away. It had been too much, far, far too much, and his stomach had revolted. After coercing his mother to force down a decent breakfast, it had been himself heaving into a nearby trashcan that morning, something the janitor would have to deal with later. And that was it, he didn't even try to look again. It had fallen upon his mother to follow through on the proper identification procedures. Not that she was capable of yet accepting the truth about her youngest son.

Jonathan hadn't even attempted to look at the body a second time and later the thought had horrified him. The idea he would never see Will again, that his last glance at him had been accompanied by the sight and smell of his own vomit. They were doing a closed casket, apparently the sight of dead children upset too many people so it was “easier.” They still have to speak to the funeral director but the people at the morgue had all but made the decision for them, which seemed odd. Jonathan hadn't realized coroners played any part in funeral directions.

He's pretty sure he can also ask for a viewing at the funeral home, right before the services maybe, but Will would be all made up with that disgusting funeral makeup and chemicals in his veins. Besides, Jonathan couldn't stand the idea of seeing Will lying in a coffin. He just couldn't. On top of those issues, he wants time alone with him. He needs to be alone with his baby brother. The one who he failed to protect and will now never open his eyes again.

Will had, has, such kind eyes. Big, hazel, often half-lidded. Like a newborn calf laying at its mother's side, so trusting and calm. He had never ran around screaming and flailing like other children. He had always been calm and quiet.

Never this calm and quiet. Jonathan's slightly terrified as he stares at Will's slack face. He's not afraid of Will. Will would never hurt him. He'd never hurt anybody. Not even after what Jonathan did, after Jonathan allowed him to die. But Jonathan has never been close to a dead body and something primal is telling him to run. It's not normal to want to be near corpses, not even of deceased love ones. Some ancient instinct warns him against diseases and predators waiting to scavenge. Not safe. Get away. Not safe. Run. Not safe. Abandon your dead.

Instead, he lifts the camera and takes one of many pictures to come. The light flashes bright white, illuminating the already brightly lit room. Like the flash of light alien abductees claim to see before they're taken onto invisible spaceships. Blinding, almost supernatural. The blue veins of his little brother's face stand out so starkly in contrast.

Jonathan winces. The white-blue flesh is disconcerting. He takes another picture. And another. The hiss and flash of the camera repeats again and again, echoing through the otherwise abandoned room. The sound makes him think of scalding water. He photographs the slope of Will's forehead, the profile of parted lips, the sweep of his jaw. Every flash exposes more of that unnatural skin tone. Of the unmoving facial features. Of the still lips where no air passes. It's Will, he knows it's Will, but it's not. Will is gone. Will isn't inside this husk of skin and bone.

But it's his body. Jonathan sets aside his camera and fingers the coarse sheets again. He folds the cloth down further, almost halfing the fabric, exposing his brother's bony chest. His little nipples, barely visible, little more than mosquito bites. His navel. An innie, but not a pronounced one. An indent barely set deep enough to hold more than a few droplets of water. He allows the sheets to fall silently once more when he finally exposes his hands. Fingers curled inward, not quite touching the soft flesh of his palms.

These are, were, are Will's hands. These are the hands that created art. The hands that had drawn so many of the pictures that decorate Jonathan's walls. Including the one that is tacked onto the back of Jonathan's door. He thinks about the time when Will, showing his upper left missing tooth gap through his grin, had presented him with that particularly large piece of construction paper. It was far from the first time Will had given him a drawing and it hadn't been a big deal at the time, but Jonathan had excitedly complimented it with an “oh wow!” and had promised to hang it up right away.

He had been a shitty brother. It had taken almost a week for Jonathan to tack up the preadolescence work of art. A bright, colorful piece representation in crayon, proclaiming Jonathan the best big brother in the world, against a backdrop of Castle Byers. With cartoon Jonathan's crown reading #1 Bro on it. It's still hanging on his door, though it has fallen off once or twice over the years. The bottom is scuffed, coated with dust.

Jonathan reaches slowly, hesitantly, for one of the hands, fearing that it may be stiff. He doesn't know much about death but he's heard that bodies turn stiff as stone after a couple days, and he was in the refrigerator when Jonathan had entered the room. Or cooler. Whatever you call it. The idea of Will being in a giant refrigerator is mildly unsettling. Like he's a leftover meatloaf thrown on the bottom shelf for a weekend lunch.

The small fingers are pliable. Cold, but not stuck. Jonathan entwines the fingers between his own, pressing palm to palm, and stares at the small digits contrasting against his own darker skin. They've always been close in tone in the past, if anything Will is often darker from spending more time outside in the summer months than himself. The flesh around the fingernails are bluer than the rest of his body, some of the nails are torn.

Tears well up in his eyes. When he blinks, one rolls down each cheek. They're hot and salty and sting. His skin is already raw from crying earlier in the day.

“I'm sorry,” he whispers, his voice catching. He swallows, his throat instantly filling with mucus. He's released so many tears his body was just waiting for the chance to go back into snot production mode. “I'm sorry,” he repeats louder. “I should have been home that night. If, if I had maybe we would have found you before it happened. I, I don't know. But I would have went out looking for you, you know that right?” There's no answer. Not that Jonathan was expecting an answer, he's not insane, he knows corpses don't talk. “I love you. I never, never wanted anything to happen to you. I'd trade my life for yours in an instant if I could.”

He goes quiet again. The room is eerily silent. The silence that follows a hollow echo. The kind of silence that says it was recently interrupted but that it has returned to its natural state of being. Jonathan brings Will's hand up to his lip and kisses each of the small fingers separately, then places it back down at his side. He doesn't want to let go of him, not yet, but he needs to finish what he's here for.

He takes up the camera once more. The photographs are wider now, set further back, as he captures more of his body. He makes sure to take several pictures of his hands, considers re-positioning them so they're folded over his chest, but that feels macabre. He does several close ups of them anyway, trying to detail the way the translucent nails sparkle in the light. Capturing the image better than any memory ever could. He captures the hollowness of his brother's stomach. The ridges that make up his rib-cage. He makes sure to photograph every mole that is visible, including that regenerated one on his throat.

Jonathan touches that mole. Will has such a tiny throat his fingers all but cover it with just one hand resting across the skin. He presses the pad of his thumb into the little brown dot and rubs against the bump as if it's a genie's lamp. To have just one wish. Just one fucking wish.

He's sick of the ghostly pallor. He misses the subtle darkness of Will's natural skin color. Not anywhere near dark enough to be considered olive toned, but not exactly Irish white either. Will never burned as a child, no matter how many hours he spent riding his bike with his friends.

By the time the photograph session is finished Jonathan's face is soaked and he keeps wiping at his nose with the back of his sleeve. He can barely see, his eyes are blurry with continuous tears, and he's sobbing so that it's difficult to steady the camera. But he doesn't care. He presses the button on the camera again and again until he is totally out of film. Then he sets the camera aside once more and crosses the room to the light switch. He turns off all but one in the far corner, bathing Will's body in shadows. Visible, but veiled. He appears to be glowing in the darkness, but the harshness of the fluorescent bulbs disappear off the surface of his skin. He softens under the dim lighting.

It's past eleven now. Jonathan has done what he's come to do, he's out of film, but it doesn't feel right to leave Will here like this. To leave him alone in the cold, sterile room. To leave him like leftovers in the refrigerator. He contemplates crawling in with him. That would be a good way to go. To just crawl into the icebox with his little brother's body, hold him, and shiver his way towards oblivion.

But he can't do that to his mother. She needs him. If she lost him Jonathan doesn't know what she would do, but she probably wouldn't survive the year. He loves his mother; he doesn't want to cause her anymore pain.

Accepting his need for continued existence, Jonathan sits back beside Will again. He takes his hand again, the same one he had held earlier, and sits silently, looking at his brother. He knows the photographs will help but he still wants to memorize his last few minutes with his baby brother. He works to dedicate this exact angle to memory. The temperature of the room. The smell. The shadows across Will's nose. The angle of his lips. He wants this exact moment to always be real. To always be re-callable, like a movie he can play in his head.

He wants this memory burned into his brain. Even though he's crying and keeps wiping at his face. He turns his head down and leans forward, pressing his forehead against the back of Will's small hand. He knows his tears are wetting Will's fingers but he wants that. He wants to leave part of himself on Will's body. He wants Will to know his big brother loves him and always will.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” he sobs. His lips touch Will's fingers, he doesn't care. He doesn't care if his lips are touching a corpse. It's Will. It's Will. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.”

Then he can't speak again for a long time, because all he can do is sob and sob into his brother's hand. But the tears don't stop and Jonathan tucks the hand back in place before covering his face with his own arms and leaning against the gurney. His entire body heaves with his weeping and his face becomes hot with his own breath washing back onto him.

By the time he quiets, his head aches. And his back, from leaning over in such an awkward position for so long. And his face and hair are both wet with sweat and tears and snot. He tries his best to wipe off his skin and tuck his hair back in place. But what's the use? Who does he have to look presentable for?

Will still lays there, quiet and peaceful. He hasn't moved an inch. But his body is starting to grow warmer. He's been here over an hour and a half and Jonathan knows he needs to put Will back in...that place. He doesn't want to think of the icy cloud that rolled out when he opened the door to his brother's makeshift home.

Can't he just take him out of here? What could they do about that? If he brought Will back home and put him into his own bed? Will would want to be in his own bed. This whole artificial shit with refrigerators is all to make other people feel better. Will wouldn't want to be in a fucking fridge.

He'd probably be arrested, or at least hit with a heavy fine. It'd be worth it, really. If it wasn't for their mother. She doesn't need anything else to worry about. And it's getting late. Jonathan needs to be back in town at eight tomorrow, to start planning his brother's funeral. He deserves a beautiful funeral.

“I need to leave,” he says thickly. He swallows, the spit in his throat is thick like honey and just makes it harder to breathe. “I'm sorry, I love you, I'd stay with you if I could.” He licks his lips and looks at Will. He's so vulnerable and he'll be more so without Jonathan here to watch after him. He's just so small. So young. He had so much to experience yet. Puberty! Kissing a girl! Or kissing a boy. Jonathan didn't care if his brother had been gay, as all the signs had indicated. He never had a boyfriend. He never got to go on a date. To go to a dance. To get his license. To graduate high school. To go to college.

Jonathan leans over his brother's body and embraces him for a final time. He's not cold anymore. It feels more natural, better. He presses his face against Will's, cheek to cheek, and it's almost like hugging his brother, not this shell of a corpse. Maybe if Will had just come in from playing outside on a cold day he would be vaguely cool like this. Jonathan entwines his fingers into Will's hair and just holds him for a long minute, imagining that Will is still alive and needing comforting, like when he had chicken pox a couple years ago and had felt so shitty he had crawled into Jonathan's lap for a hug. He had been far too old for such a thing back then but it hadn't felt awkward, not with the misery on Will's face and the burning heat of his fevered, pock-marked skin.

He turns his head, his nose digging into Will's cheek, and kisses the side of his face. His flesh is still soft with childhood. Barely past the baby fat stage, Will had yet to reach a real growth spurt. His entire head is barely larger than Jonathan's hand. He nuzzles against Will's face and kisses him again. It doesn't feel abnormal. He isn't frozen, he isn't hard, it isn't like kissing ice, it's like kissing his brother. He kisses his cheek and his closed eyelids and his forehead and the bridge of his nose. He's crying still, the tears smearing across his skin. He doesn't care. He doesn't care if Will is covered with his tears. He doesn't care if his hair is messy and there's evidence all over him tomorrow of his presence.

Encircling Will in his arms, he pulls him up. The boy's head hangs back, unable to support itself, like a newborn baby. He cradles a hand behind it and pushes Will's head against his own shoulder. His other arm, the one not pressed against the back of the boy's head, goes around his waist. He hoists him off of the gurney and holds him fully in his arms. He's still wrapped up in the sheets but Jonathan fixes that. Once he takes a seat on the floor, cross-legged, he carefully tugs at the sheet, freeing Will from its confines. He's completely nude beneath it, all hairless, pale skin. He tosses the sheet aside and holds Will in his lap, rocking back and forth on the cold tiles. He sobs into Will's throat, his fingers too tight in his soft brown hair. If Will was alive he would complain that Jonathan was hurting him.

“I love you,” he gets out, all but shouting it into his brother's throat as he gives himself totally over to emotion. “I love you so much.”

Will is limp in his arms. He might as well be a bag of old clothing, like the one holding Jonathan's lightly worn jeans and t-shirts that their mother had donated to the local Goodwill after a sudden growth spurt a couple years ago. He thinks about Will's clothing back home. Of his small, old dresser with the dents and sagging drawers, the third one down missing a knob. He pictures Will's secondhand shirts and his jeans with the knees almost worn out. How tiny those clothes were when Jonathan washed and folded them and put them away in their drawers just last week. More like doll clothing than anything a human could ever fit into. Would their mother donate his clothing? The idea of some other child wearing his brother's clothing is like a weight on his chest. Dead weight. Dead weight like Will. Except, though dead, there is not much weight, he's so tiny in his arms. So light. Lighter than Jonathan thought he would be. Did they already drain his blood?

He pushes Will back from him and grabs his head with both hands, keeping him in place, and looks into his brother's face. Eyes still closed, eyelids delicately veined. Would his veins be so prominent if they were empty of fluid? Jonathan kisses the eyelids once, twice, three times. Over and over again, the skin there so thin and silky. His mouth hangs open wider now, gravity doing its job, the dark lighting exposing only a black cavern. His other eight fingers still cradling his face, Jonathan pushes his jaw up with his thumbs, closing his mouth. His teeth make a small clanking sound. He always had such big teeth, he never got a chance to grow into them. He hasn't had that growth spurt yet that forced Jonathan to replace his entire wardrobe.

He never will get a chance.

Jonathan kisses the dark area beneath his eyes and the fragile area under his temples. His hair feels silky beneath his lips. He expects it to taste murky like quarry water but it doesn't. They must have cleaned him. With something strong because he doesn't smell like Will. Jonathan wants hims to smell like Will, that warm, comforting smell of his baby brother's skin and cheap shampoo and sweet toothpaste, but he smells like something artificial. Probably some sort of antiseptic soap. Something stringently chemical, another abrasive on his brother's sensitive skin.

He wants to wash him, give him a sponge-bath with scented oils like some Biblical scene, but the idea is absurd. He should just be content with the fact he has freed Will from the confines of the thin, scratchy sheets.

Glancing down, he feels guilty. This can't be a comfortable position. Will's legs are sprawled at an unnatural angle, knees digging into the tiles. Carefully, Jonathan turns him around, brings him to his lap so his own chest can spoon against his brother's back. The knobs of his vertebrae stand out like little bullets down his spine. His tailbone scrapes against Jonathan's metal zipper and he grits his teeth as he sucks in a breath between his teeth. No good. Even worse than poorly made sheets.

“Just sit here for a second,” he says, apologizes, as he leaves Will's body leaning against the wall. He makes short work of his clothes, leaving only his socks on, and joins Will to the side of the room. This is so, so much better. Not just because his own skin is gentle on Will's, but now he gets to feel his brother one last time, flesh to flesh, nothing but downy body hair separating them. He positions Will back on his lap and presses his forehead against the back of his neck, breathing him in. The hair at the nape of his neck smells dusty like an old library book. It creates a veil around his face as his head droops forward.

Jonathan holds him in place with his hand pressed flat into Will's chest, right at the spot where the ribs end and the softness of the belly begins. There's no movement. No gentle inhaling, no sweet exhale. His lungs inside his body are probably as shriveled up as a weeks old party balloon.

“I'd give you my lungs,” he tells Will. “If you would breathe again, you could have them all to yourself. I wouldn't ask for anything.” He kisses the little soft brown fuzz on the back of Will's neck. Then he kisses down his neck, to where it meets his shoulder, then he's kissing his shoulder, caressing the moles there with his lips. Such small shoulders. So narrow. The muscles in his arms stand out, but only because there is barely any fat on them to fill in the spaces. He's sinewy and lean and soft and fuzzy and exactly how Jonathan has always known him to be. His little brother. The only little brother he's ever had, but the best one that ever existed, surely. They had never fought, never argued. Jonathan had never understood the whole “sibling rivalry” trope in the movies, he had never had a reason to fight with his baby brother.

He presses his lips into the space between his shoulder blades, leaving wet marks where his tears drips onto his skin. How long has he been crying? When did it start up again? He thought he had run out of tears by now. His body must be nearly as dry and shriveled up as Will's lungs.

Tightening his grip hard around the tiny waist, Jonathan presses his chest hard against Will's back. Hard enough to break something inside of him, but he doesn't hear anything crack. His nose oozes mucus into that hair on his brother's neck and he feels guilty about that. He doesn't want to mess up his soft, pretty little boy hairs.

He wipes the back of Will's neck off with his hand but it doesn't help. The follicles are already shiny and oily with his tears. The hairs flatten against his skin and stick there. They'll probably harden like that, but the funeral home people should do another thorough cleaning of his body before the funeral. He won't be buried a mess.

“I don't want you to go in the ground,” Jonathan whines miserably, the sheer pain in his voice surprising himself. “I want you to stay here with me. It's not fair. Why did it have to be my brother? Why did it have to be you? You were so good. So good.” His fingers dig into Will's stomach, nails like talons. His stomach is so small and concave he can almost stretch his entire hand across it, end to end with splayed fingers. “I never told you that enough, Will. How much I adored you. How much I loved you. How grateful I was to have such a sweet, cute little brother. You were always the cutest ones in the school plays and, and you were always the cutest one on Halloween. Like when you all dressed up as the Scooby Doo gang and the other boys made you go as Scrappy because you were the smallest. You complained so much but you were so, so cute with your little ears and your little nose. I know I made fun of you but I took those pictures I shot of you and showed them off at school. I told everybody 'Look how cute my little brother is, he's the cutest little brother in the world.' They laughed at me but I didn't care. I was so proud of you.”

Jonathan swallows, and licks him lips. And then says the words he never planned to speak aloud, let alone share with another living soul. Will isn't a living soul.

“I, I masturbated to those pictures, actually,” he confesses, his voice languid. Spilling out and laying heavy on the surface like oil on cold, still water. “It was wrong. I shouldn't have. Of course I shouldn't have, it was sick. But I was only fourteen and you, you were so cute. And I kept thinking about how pretty your throat was with that collar around it, eve, even though I told you it might tear one of your moles. And then Mike put a fucking leash on you and, Jesus. I know it was supposed to be cute and funny, you on a leash, but it was so fucking erotic.”

Jonathan takes a deep breath and swallows again. His breathing sounds wet. Is he inhaling his own tears? What if his lungs get full of fluid and he catches pneumonia? He tries to calm himself. His face is stinging still from all the tears. He wipes his face into Will's hair, softer than any tissue.

“I masturbated for months to that image. To the idea of leading you into my bedroom on that stupid leather leash and telling you to heel at my feet. I'm such a sick bastard. What kind of brother, what kind of person, thinks that shit about his little brother? If you needed protecting against anything it was me. It's always been me. You know that scar on your chin? The one nobody knew how you got? That was me. I picked you up out of your crib when you were a baby because I wanted to hold you and I accidentally dropped you. You smacked against Mom's bedpost and started crying so I put you back in the crib and ran and they thought you had hurt yourself somehow. I never had the guts to tell Mom what really happened.”

His fingertips are tingling. His whole body feels taut. This feels wrong now, holding Will's body against his own after telling him. Will probably knew already though. He probably knows everything now, wherever he is. Heaven or some astral plane or waiting to be reborn as the world's most unique and gorgeous butterfly. He nuzzles Will's head anyway and tries to ignore the guilt eating at him. He won't let his last night with his brother be ruined by his own actions.

“I loved you when you were born,” Jonathan continues. He realizes he's rocking Will's body once more. He doesn't stop, it feels good, giving a little movement. It provides a false sense of allusion, as if he were breathing. “ You were a month premature and your lungs weren't fully developed and you had to be inside that stupid plastic box and I wasn't allowed to touch you. I wanted to touch you. I'd look at you and you were so small and alone in that stupid thing and I just wanted to pick you up and hold you against my shoulder and sing to you. Which is ridiculous because I knew nothing about babies, certainly not how to hold one, I was a pre-schooler! But I knew you didn't want to be alone in there. You never liked being alone. And now they're going to put you alone in another box and I, and I can't do anything about it and they'll never let you out. They'll never let you out and I'll never be allowed in and I'll never touch you again.”

The last few words come out tight, breaking on the last word in a sob. He squeezes Will even tighter, as if somebody was about to come and try to snatch him from his arms. His waist compresses beneath the curve of his elbow, the skin almost rubber-like in death. As if the firmness of life is draining from his very cells. The words are flooding from his mouth, unstoppable, continuous, with no thought put into them. Just a stream of consciousness.

“I wish I had touched you more,” he warbles, pressing his lips into the crown of Will's head. The silky hair feels good again his face, like a loving caress. “I stopped after that Halloween, because I was a, afraid, of what I might do. But I wish I had touched you more. I wish I had hugged you and kissed you and scratched your back for you. Remember how I used to scratch your back for you, when you were younger? You called it mewsies, after Dustin's cat. You would come up to me and ask for mewsies because you loved being scratched. And I started telling you no and you accepted it but then you just stopped asking for mewsies and sometimes I just really wanted to scratch your back for you. Like, I'd walk behind you at the table and you'd be hunched over drawing, and you were so cute like that with your tongue stuck out in concentration, and I just wanted to drag my nails over your shoulders and I'd feel my fingers twitching with anticipation but I wouldn't let myself do it.” He's past the point of rambling. His words are desperate, despairing. The words of a crazy person losing it. Of somebody who belongs in a straight jacket. “I wouldn't allow myself to defile you. But Jesus, you're dead, how much more defiled can you be than this? But I don't care. I need to hold you. I should have held you when you were alive. I don't want to let go. Ever. Never. Never ever. I wish the Soviets would just drop the fucking bomb already and the radiation would just melt us together forever. God, how I would love that. To be one with you for eternity.”

Jonathan trails off, finally silent. His stomach is in knots. And the last few words lay heavy on his tongue and mind. “To be one.” Like a marriage. He isn't even sure why he said those words. That isn't something brothers feel for each other. He never wanted to be like that with Will either. His relationship with Will was something deeper, pure, but describable in normal terms. He loved Will but not like a boyfriend or husband. But not exactly like a brother either.

“To be one” with Will is suggestive. Sexual, really. What if that opportunity had presented itself in the future? If Will hadn't died at such a tender young age. Will was most likely gay, would he have come to Jonathan in the next couple years, seeking advice? Asking him if it was okay to like other boys? Asking if it was okay to take other boys to dances? Asking how it was that two boys were...intimate?

The idea of Will loving and being with another male isn't painful to Jonathan. If anything, he finds the idea beautifully tragic. Will deserved a doting significant other, a man that could have taken better care of him than Jonathan ever could. But that man, if he exists, will now be doomed to an eternity without his soulmate. Another life ruined because of Jonathan's stupidity.

What if a fourteen-year-old Will had come to him at some point and asked him to _show_ him how two men were intimate? What if he asked Jonathan to teach him? To instruct him? To be a sweet, gentle big brother who would be slow and soft with him? Because Will is, was, a sensitive flower of a boy and needed to learn these things from somebody he trusted. And who could Will trust more than his loving big brother?

Jonathan sees Will in his head. A couple years older, a couple years taller, alive, breathing, breathing heavily, moaning, screaming. He can almost feel his little brother's legs around his waist, his heels digging into his lower back, his nails on his back.

The idea makes Jonathan hard. He's horrified when he feels it happening, feels the thickening of his cock as it shifts against Will's lower back. Feels himself growing, stiffening from firm to hard, like Play-Doh left out overnight.

He takes several deep breaths through his nose, trying to fight this feeling. Trying to will away probably the most improper erection in all human history.

His cock throbs painfully against his dead brother's thigh. Jonathan looks over his pale shoulder, his chin touching one of the moles there, and glances down. His own dick is hard and deep red, borderline maroon, standing out between Will's ghostly pale thighs. His little brother's own cock lays there completely soft. More than soft, shriveled, like a wilted old mushroom found in the back of a fridge several months too late for consumption. Jonathan licks at his teeth. Watches a drop of precum make its way down his shaft. He licks his teeth again.

“This won't hurt,” he promises, already licking his own palm. He grips one of Will's thighs, keeping his legs parted, as he coats himself with saliva.

He uses his own legs, squeezing his knees alongside Will's, to press Will's legs closed once more. To enclose his hard cock within the confines of Will's soft, pale, almost hairless thighs. The only lube he has is his own spit, mucus, and a generous amount of pre-cum. He's always been a prolific producer of the latter and snot, when rubbed along an already hair-trigger erection, has some decent staying power.

His thrusts are shallow and slow and awkward. It's not normal to move your hips in this position and he eventually ends up sliding partially down the wall, keeping Will close to him, to free up more movement for his hips. His arms stay around Will's waist, holding him in place. Not just against his chest now but firmly down on his lap. When he has trouble keeping his legs closed tightly enough, Jonathan entwines his legs with his brothers, using his ankles to pin them in place. Will's bony, knobby knees knock together, the gap between his thighs tightening.

It's too difficult to look at himself when he does this. To see Will's simultaneously skinny yet plump thighs around him. He thinks, momentarily, of taking this one step farther. Of turning Will over, of putting his legs over his shoulders, of doing this for real. But that would hurt Will. Will is much too young and small for anal intercourse with his big brother.

He keeps his forehead pressed against the back of Will's neck and clenches his eyes closed. He concentrates on the weight of Will's body in his arms, the rustle of his hair. He concentrates on the feeling of his skin, flesh on flesh, as he thrusts into tight, dry heat. His breathing is labored but besides the heavy, uneven breaths forced between clenched teeth he makes no sound. Except for the wet, squelching sound of a hard cock encased in saliva and mucus and dead boy flesh. The head of his dick feels uncomfortable in the cool air whenever he pushes up fully. His brother's thighs are thinner than the length of his erection.

Jonathan's dick begins to chafe. He spits in his hand repeatedly and rubs it along his shaft, smearing it the best he can, but it doesn't matter. By the time he cums his cock is tender and sore like a bad sunburn. His penis feels like a piece of spit out bubblegum on the floor of a school bus.

He lets the cum land on Will's thighs and lower stomach, just missing the little reservoir of his belly button. Jonathan stares at the substance, aghast. It's white, that's one of the definitions of semen. One of its major discerning characteristics. But it looks less white than the blue-white of Will's thighs. His legs go slack, his entire body relaxed in post-orgasm exhaustion. Will's head lolls to one side and Will's legs fall open, thighs parting. They aren't red like Jonathan's dick. No blood flow to irritate. His little penis is still soft and undisturbed.

Jonathan screams into Will's hair and digs his nails so hard into Will's wrists they leave pronounced indents that don't fade.

It's dawn before Jonathan returns Will to the ice.

And in the scheme of things, it's not that much longer before he's holding the real Will, a warmer but still blue-white Will, in his arms.

**Author's Note:**

> So apparently to Tumblr I'm that evil person who writes Jonathan/Will underage smut. Hopefully this one is more acceptable seeing as Will is actually just a doll? 
> 
> Sorry for the long absence btw, was on vacation out of state.


End file.
